“Well,” said the clerk, both rebukingly and self-defensively, “people usually ask for Mr. Thompson.”
“He himself evidently doesn't. He told me to ask for Thompson.”
The clerk rose. “Appointment?” he asked.
“Yep,” said Tommy.
“What name?”
Tommy pulled out the telegram, folded it, and giving it to the reluctant clerk, said, paternally, “He'll know!”
The clerk went into an inner office. Presently he returned. “This way,” he said.
Tommy followed. His mind was asking itself a thousand questions and not answering a single one.
He walked into a large room. It was characteristic of him that he took in the room with a quick glance, feeling it was wise to size up the ground before tackling the enemy, who, after all, might not prove to be an enemy. There were big windows on three sides. One looked into a shop, another into the street, and the third into the factory yard. A man sat at a square, flat desk. There were no papers on it, only a pen-tray with two fountain-pens and a dozen neatly sharpened lead-pencils. Also a row of push-buttons, at least ten of them, all numbered. The walls were bare save for a big calendar and an electric clock. The floor was of polished hardwood. The desk stood on a large and beautiful Oriental rug. There were but two chairs; on one of them Mr. Thompson sat. The other stood beside the desk. Through an open door Tommy, with a quick glance, looked into an adjoining room and saw a long, polished mahogany table with a dozen mahogany arm-chairs about it.
“Leigh?” asked the man at the desk. He was a young-looking man, stout, with smooth-shaven, plump pink cheeks, that by inducing a belief in potential dimples gave an impression of good nature. His eyes were brown, clear, steady and bright, with a suggestion of fearlessness rather than of aggressiveness. His head was well shaped and the hair was dean-looking and neatly brushed. His forehead was smooth. Tommy felt that there was a quick-moving and utterly reliable intelligence within that cranium. It brought to him a sense of relief. In some unexplained way he was sure that he need not bother to pick and choose his own words in talking to Thompson. Whatever a man said, and even what he did not say, would be caught, not spectacularly or over-alertly, but unerringly, without effort, by this plump but efficient president. It stimulated Tommy's mind and made it work quickly, and also inclined him to frankness without exactly inducing an overwhelming desire to confide. Understanding rather than sympathy was what he felt he would get from the stranger.